Hardy Blossoms Don't Die of Thirst, But Drown
by Faeriekit
Summary: Suna was unforgiving towards all life, from the scorpions crawling in the sand to the soldiers crawling over the craggy walls. Yashamaru has as many far-fetched plans as there are stars in the desert sky, but power required to keep his family safe has a steep price. In the back of his head, the future looms. [SI fic]
1. Death, Perhaps

**A scream.**

"What?" Penelope asked, pushing her coworker's head down in order to gain a better view. The mall was typically a crowded, loud place, but something had agitated the shoppers beyond normal measures of sound.

"It sounds bad," James muttered ominously. "I think we should close up."

"Can we?" Penelope asked, just in time to hear the loudspeaker over their head crackle to life.

"Attention shoppers," the voice boomed over the noise of a thousand victims of materialism, "please proceed to the nearest exit quietly and calmly. There has been a bomb threat-" And that was all Penelope could hear before the screaming erupted, twice as piercing and far more frequent than before.

"What?" James shouted over the din, before the first explosion went off.

"James!" Penelope shouted, eyes wide and arms suddenly empty. The churning throng of bodies pushed her and pulled her away, leaving her alone and stranded outside of the implied safety of the store she was employed in. There was another and another and another detonation, and Penelope was broken apart and flying and falling and hurting and trampled-

And she screamed.

* * *

Penelope had possessed a _lot_ of time to think about the bomb, recently.

She was suspended in funny-tasting fluid, but surprisingly, had no need to breathe. Some tube she was connected to seemed to provide both food and oxygen when she needed it.

It was a convenient set up, but it left Penelope both bored and vaguely unsatisfied. Sure, it was always the perfect temperature, with cushy interior and an enjoyable floating sensation, but she had no idea what had happened back at her job. Was James hurt? Was he _dead_?

Was _she_ dead? It would explain the bizarre treatment she was receiving.

She had tried to weep over his perhaps-death, only to find her body numbed and immobile. She had resorted to pressing her chubby-feeling hands on her face and weeping tears into the viscous liquid surrounding her.

Penelope wriggled.

She had finally met the boundaries of the liquid pool; they were squishy and concave, and gave way when she pushed them. Penelope tried to ignore whenever something pushed back. But Penelope had made another discovery in the strange world she inhabited. She was not alone.

Limbs flailed around liberally, arms and legs tangling and occasionally, even getting caught. It was the happiest thing she had ever known.

And yet, it was beginning to worry her. Sure, Penelope was blind in this strange new environment, but she could feel the closeness of their proximity, and the way the barriers seemed to tighten around her every day. Well, metaphoric day. She had no real way of telling time in this pudding-bubble she found herself encased in.

But Penelope's hand found her sole companion's, and they remained comforted in their shared warmth.

It was too **tight**!

Penelope and her companion were pushing and punching, landing hits on the wall (but mostly on each other). Penelope wanted to wail, but, of course, was unable to draw breath in the liquid pouch. So she renewed every kick with more vigor, and every kick with a little more 'oomph'. Eventually she felt something give, only to find her companion farther away than usual. Had they found a way out?

A moment passed, and then…they were gone. Penelope panicked. Was she alone? No, nononononono, she wasn't meant to be alone! Never, never never ever!

She _loved_ them!

Squirming and swimming towards where she had last felt them, Penelope was abruptly attacked by the walls that housed her.

 **No, nonono-**

She was _squeezed_ all around, her body restrained and the pressure uncomfortably painful. She thought she felt something strange, something she hadn't felt in what felt like years-

And suddenly it was cold and _bright_ , the light burning her eyes and the abrupt change in temperature searing her sensitive skin. Penelope opened her mouth wide, and, shocked by the air that rushed into her lungs, she **screamed**.

And yet she wasn't the only one. There was another voice just like her, screaming madly in fright. Penelope raised her voice just like theirs, overwhelmed by the noise and the light and the cold.

A hand _slapped_ her rear, to Penelope's sudden horror. What had just happened? Was she just sexually assaulted by a giant hand? Another giant picked her up, wrapping her in a (itchy, itchy itchy!) cloth and placing her in someone's arms. Penelope stopped screaming in order to take in another gloriously deep breath when a soft-spoken voice stopped her.

The giant was purring and cooing in a language she didn't recognize, soothing her panicked terror and forcing her to give up her screaming. Penelope was too afraid to lie still, but knew she was also too exhausted to keep up her panicked shrieks.

As soon as her pouch mate's shrieks dwindled off, Penelope found herself drifting away into dreamland.

* * *

Penelope was less confused than perhaps was warranted in her situation.

Her pouch mate was a happy, bubbly baby, with a loud wail and unfocused violet eyes. _Penelope_ was a loud baby, in an identical beige onesie and a rather antique, cloth diaper.

Groooooss.

Her pouch mate cooed again, and Penelope wasn't un-invested enough to not gurgle back.

"Here, child," the womanish-looking giant called from above, "it's time for a diaper change." It had already been a few months since her second birth, and Penelope had been spending her time wisely. Time went into focusing on distant objects, discerning gender (or at least sex), and analyzing vocabulary.

For instance, whenever her diaper needed changing, her mother would always say the same thing. Certain word patterns would pop up whenever Mother asked Father for a bottle, but the words _bottle_ and _milk_ would stay the same.

Her pouch mate was _Karura_.

Penelope thought _Karura_ was the cutest baby in the entire world, even when the little human bean would drool on her in her sleep.

There was, however, one teensy little thing Penelope was finding hard to reconcile.

And that was when Mother slipped off her onesie and undid her diaper, _and a wrong sort of genitals would be staring her in the face_.

"Yashamaru, stop screaming," Mother ordered patiently every time she would change her son. "It's just a diaper."

* * *

 _I don't own anything related to the Naruto series, neither the situations, locations, characters, nor any other inventions belonging to the original creators of said work._


	2. Later, Someone Pisses off the Elderly

It wasn't _too_ long until Yashamaru and Karura began to walk around the house.

Karura followed Mother wherever she went, and had the tendency to sit at her mother's feet when the woman cooked. Mother found the habit adorable, but was forced to take care not to tread on her daughter as she moved about the kitchen. Dinners consisted of root vegetables and dried meat, with few spices to add a modicum of flavor. The twins ate all that could be afforded to them.

Yashamaru, to his parents' amusement, followed Karura like a stray puppy. He watched her attentively wherever she went, and deferred to her choices in food, toys, clothing, and anything else.

Yashamaru loved Mother and Father. Father had bright red hair and the twins' violet-grey eyes, and smiled at them like they were the light of his life. The Yashamaru that used to be Penelope was smart enough to recognize a soldier's uniform when she saw one, but it meant little to him. This man was Yashamaru's Father, and nothing more.

Mother looked a warrior queen, always dressed for battle against the harsh elements of the world outside their door. Her sandy hair was cropped to the nape of her neck, the blonde strands soft and warm whenever Yashamaru had the chance to rub against them.

Her eyes were a pretty color that the Penelope in Yashamaru equated to the ocean.

"Karura, Yashamaru!" Mother called, giving them one last chance to flee before she would forcefully pull them out of their hiding space.

Karura giggled, dooming them both. Mother instantly snatched their cover (a box) off of them, pulling up one baby in each arm.

"Little sneaks," she cooed, Yashamaru grinning into her loving expression. She always managed to find them eventually. "You will make excellent Shinobi one day."

* * *

Yashamaru learned what "Shinobi" meant when Father didn't come home one night.

"Mother?" Yashamaru called, using one of the few words he knew. He never called for Mother unless it was an emergency, so he wasn't surprised when she jogged into their bed-corner immediately.

"Yashamaru," she scolded upon finding no one was injured, "Karura's sleeping."

Yashamaru fiddled with his threadbare blanket, properly ashamed. "Father," he requested, eyes wide with worry. "Father?"

Mother sighed, giving her son a weary smile. "He was moved off the border guard today," she explained, trusting her son to accept her explanation, even if he didn't understand it at his age. "He was put on a mission by the Kazekage.

"Don't worry," Mother soothed, and with warm eyes, the shinobi's wife tucked Yashamaru back into bed. "Your Father will be home soon enough."

He wasn't. From what Yashamaru would find out years later, flipping through files and files of archived duty rosters for their family name, he had died in the hospital of injuries received on duty.

* * *

"Mother?" Yashamaru finally asked, just to be sure. "Are you a boy, or a girl?"

Mother turned around, disbelief in her eyes. "Yashamaru, I am your mother," she retorted firmly, as if this explained everything.

Yashamaru twisted his lips. It didn't. Eventually, Mother sighed and put down the knives she had been sharpening. "Only girls can give birth and make babies," she explained, trying to dumb it down for a creature that had only been alive for a few months. "I am a girl."

Yashamaru frowned, still trying to understand what it meant for him. "Is Karura a girl?" he asked, picking up the thread of conversation.

Mother nodded, glad Yashamaru had begun to understand. "Yes, she is."

Yashamaru paused. "Am _I_ a girl?"

Mother let out a small sigh. And she had been hoping… "No, Yashamaru, you are not a girl. You are a boy."

Yashamaru's face crumpled. "But I look just like Karura!" he protested, following Mother as she stood and passed through the cloth flap that posed as their door. "Aren't boys supposed to look different?"

Karura popped her head out of the kitchen, where the smell of something burnt still lingered from last night's dinner.

"Boys have to look different than what?" Karura asked, confusion in her purple eyes. "Mother, why do boys have to look different?"

Mother sighed, easing off her legs and settling down on the couch. "Boys have different baby parts," she explained, drawing the twins closer to her body. "That's why you two look different when you take a bath together."

The pair both mouthed silent 'o's, now more sure of themselves. Yashamaru still felt…weird, though. Whatever; his mother had decreed it so, and so now it was.

"I told you," Karura interjected, earning a raspberry from her twin. "Fall in a pit," Yashamaru asserted teasingly. He shoved her gently the side before running away. Karura liked to hit back, and usually hit back harder.

* * *

Exploring in Suna was hard. Not just because of constant, almost oppressive presence of shinobi made walking the streets a necessary evil, but because there was nothing in the streets to hold a child's interest.

Bored children made trouble. It was a law of nature. Karura started the trend of throwing stones down the street and running after them, a good enough start for a four year old with no examples to mimic. Yashamaru picked up a weathered stone in his hand, turning the chalk-white edges over each other and wondering why the back of his mind called to him.

"What is it?" Karura asked through the frame of her dust-coated legs, her voice strained. She bent, bowed over, as she attempted something like a handstand. She fell over onto her tush instead.

Yashamaru flicked the stone over, throwing it at the ground even as Penelope suggested things that didn't quite exist. Karura's twin knew that _hopscotch_ and _hot potato_ were nothing a Suna native would be familiar with, but the idea of doing anything other than tossing stones into alleyways appealed to Yashamaru.

Greatly.

"Karura," Yashamaru lead his twin along slowly, "Do you want to play a chase game?" He kicked the stone he had dropped onto the dirt with the lip of his sandal. It soared over his twin's head.

Karura turned her violet eyes to his, contemplative. "Why does chase have to be a game?" she asked. It was a reasonable enough question from her standpoint; in a town with no time for play and pressed for work, games were rarely more complex than "run, or I'll punch you".

He balled his thin fingers behind his threadbare shirt and smiled at her. "It's called, uh, Shinobi on a Mission," the Penelope inside Yashamaru invented. Cops and Robbers had no context in the Shinobi nations. "Someone's the Shinobi," Yashamaru pitched the words teasingly, hitting notes to a song only Penelope knew.

Karua's nose wrinkled in suspicion as Yashamaru curled himself into her personal space. "So someone's the shinobi," Karura repeated. Her eyes narrowed in thought as Yashamaru's grin grew. "And?" she prompted.

The twins may have been shinobi progeny, but the pair were still small children at best and wanted to tussle. With a sharp snap of his wrist, Yashamaru whapped his sister on the shoulder.

"Someone else is the mission!" Yashamaru laughed, stepping back when his sister telegraphed a rather mean-looking left hook. The swing barely missed his nose. Startled, but determined, Yashamaru leapt out of the way when Karura flew towards him.

Karura seamlessly shifted out of her jump and into a sprint. Dust rose like a veil over her, coloring her sandy tunic a, well, sandier beige. The girl grinned. "Looks like that makes you the mission!" she taunted. Yashamaru let out an undignified squeal of excitement.

Karura was a fast girl, but Yashamaru was desperate, and the pair threw themselves down the sandy streets. A gentle fog of dust rose up in the footprints they left behind.

"Stop moving! I'm bringing money to the village, damn it!" Karura called laughingly, and Yashamaru was too breathless to yell anything back. He skidded and tripped around a corner, only to realize that the street they were running on had crumbled into seemingly nothing.

"Whoops," Yashamaru muttered, unable to see where he was falling. Somewhere above him, behind him, Karura screamed something that would make their mother fetch the soap.

 _Land on your legs_ , Penelope remembered suddenly, _you'll shatter them, but save your skull._ She pulled in her knees and tried to figure out where the ground was in the darkness.

Penelope only realized that Yashamaru was screaming when the sickening lurch of gravity faded, creaking arms supporting the entirety of Penelope's weight with no effort.

"…ah," Yashamaru's scream tapered off, and Penelope took the chance to look up at the man who had caught her. "Eyebrow beards," Yashamaru murmured stiltingly. Penelope was taken aback at the sight of them.

Yashamaru was quickly sent to the floor for his rude remark, although thankfully the distance was significantly smaller from open arms to the dirt floor. "Such a rude brat!" the eyebrow-bearded man scoffed, robed arms folded in offense. The boy quickly pulled himself to his feet, dusting the sand off his butt. His nose was squished up in confusion even as his fear gently ebbed away.

"Thanks for catching me," Yashamaru politely thanked the old man, who seemed a bit miffed at the child's too-honest observation. Yashamaru's mother would want him to use the well-rehearsed manners she had tutored him in, but he still couldn't stop himself from asking: "Why are you in a hole?"

Now that his eyes were adjusting, Yashamaru could see that the pit he had fallen in really was nothing more than a crater in the village streets; the walls were slick right angles with no stairs or ladders he could see. This hole was clearly was intended, Penelope reasoned, only for ninjas.

The old man, with eyebrows hanging off of his face like bubbling mold, huffed impatiently. "What are _you_ doing in my hole?" the man refuted. Penelope reasoned that he had somewhat of a point, but Yashamaru was too stubborn to lose anything to a man whose eyebrows were trying to escape from his face.

Yashamaru propped his fists up on his hips. "Your hole is right in the middle of the village," the four year old reasoned. "I fell in. I didn't wanna be here." Dusted off, and no longer in fear of gravity, Yashamaru could finally turn his attention to the twin screaming off the lip of the hole.

"I'm fine!" Yashamaru called back. Karura responded by yelling at him for being stupid and falling in. His baby sister was the best.

The old man uncrossed and dropped his arms, shuffling away from Yashamaru and deeper into the hole. The kid frowned, pattering after him as he protested: "Hey, where are you going?"

"The sooner I get you out of here, the sooner I get my peace and quiet back," the old man muttered under his breath. "I wasted all my strength running to catch your sorry rump, so now you have to go beg my sister to get you out of here."

Yashamaru scurried after the older man. He hopped, skipped, and jumped in the eyebearded man's footsteps in order to keep up. The constraining walls around them smoothed out the further the pair walked, signaling that they were approaching the cross wall of the hole.

The child didn't find anything particularly interesting about the ditch they came across, having already fallen into a hole today, but some siren song kept calling to him from the depth. The sound was low and heavy, weighted down by its own strength, and though Yashamaru found the sound familiar, Penelope was the one who recognized it first.

Which made sense. Yashamaru had never seen the ocean, but Penelope could recognize the song of lapping waves of a body of water. The pool of water didn't seem to be a surprise to the older man, but Penelope was astonished that she had stumbled onto- or, honestly, into- what was possibly the entire village's water supply. It was apparently stored in a hole.

…a hole, in fact, accessible to literally anyone who could stumble in. Wasn't Suna supposed to have dozens of poison specialists, Penelope wondered? Why was there no security around the pool? Or, Penelope thought a second later, rethinking the issue, why was it stored in such an accessible hole anyway?

Was it an oasis? Or a well? Penelope dithered over the possibilities, Yashamaru dangerously close to tipping into the pool of water.

"Get away from the edge, kid!" a grizzly, new voice called, an arm pulling Yashamaru away from the rim of the hole. "You plan on falling in or something?"

Yashamaru peeked up through this bangs; an elderly woman, presumably the sister the older man had mentioned, stood over him reprovingly. "Maybe," Yashamaru replied simply. Penelope knew how to swim, after all, and muscle memory probably counted for something. Maybe.

Then again, Penelope thought to herself, hissing as the woman's swat hit the back of her skull, maybe she shouldn't risk her life trying to figure out if she actually knew how to swim.

"Get your ass into gear," the old woman snapped, rolling her sleeves back. "Since you were stupid enough to fall into a block-long hole, I have to carry you back up myself. Why isn't your mother watching you, if you're doing such dumb shit?" she snapped out at the boy barely out of toddlerhood, as if expecting a reasonable answer. Penelope could have provided one, certainly, but Yashamaru wasn't going to be more polite than necessary to a woman so rude to him.

Yashamaru scratched at the pale stomach underneath his shirt. "Your hole is right in the middle of town," Yashamaru reasoned, again. "I fell in playing. My sister's screaming at me." Sure enough, if Yashamaru strained his ears, he could still hear Karura berating him from the lip of the hole, yards and yards above him.

"Well, grab on," the woman ignored his justification, gesturing to his back. "I don't have time for this. My grandson is graduating from the academy later tonight, and it'll just be just my luck if I miss it because some brat can't see three feet in front of him." The old woman grumbled, hunching over in what seemed to be an invitation to climb on.

Yashamaru eyed the woman suspiciously. Her bowed posture didn't exactly convince him of her strength or stability. "Are you sure you want me to climb on?" Penelope asked, trying to make sure that it wouldn't be her fault if the old woman fell over or something. The woman shot him a look filthy enough to stain his mother's nice linens. It looked like Yashamaru didn't have much of a choice.

"What, do you think that lifting a stupid brat out of a hole will kill me?" the elderly woman snapped, glaring down at his tiny frame. Yashamaru wisely said nothing, but obediently climbed onto her back.

With a powerful lurch that crushed his stomach and a burst of wind, the woman launched them out of the hole and into the open air. They floated for a split second, reaching the apex of their parabolic flight, before gravity summoned them back to the surface. With a thump and a new wave of nausea, they landed. Yashamaru rolled off of the woman's back and splattered onto the ground.

The child lay flat, panting, limbs splayed as if he had woken from a shocking nightmare. Yashamaru had shut his eyes to focus on bringing the illness in his stomach down, but a nudge of a sandal pushed into his ribs. "Ow," Yashamaru whined, in pain and emotionally spent for the day.

"Shut up," his sister's voice returned fondly, and Yashamaru peeked through slitted eyelids to find her standing over him. He shut his eyes stubbornly. "Thanks for bringing back my stupid brother, Grandma Lady," Karura thanked the old woman, which was nice of her. He was glad his sister was developing good manners, even if they were a bit…unpolished, at the moment.

"Grandma?!" the woman returned, shocked. "I am not just an old woman, you brat! I am Chiyo of the Honored Siblings, poison master and leading expert in combat puppetry! And you call me 'Grandma Lady'?!"

"Sure," Karura agreed. Yashamaru stifled a snort from his place on the ground. He didn't want to bring the woman's wrath down on him. "That's pretty cool, Grandma Chiyo. Do you still do stuff? Or are you too old to fight now?"

The woman made a choking noise, her hand rushing to over her heart suddenly. "Such…disrespect," the woman wheezed, her mood dampening drastically. "…rude…you…brats…"

She coughed, lurching suddenly in her place before tipping over gracelessly. A stumbled step sent her reeling over the same edge of the hole she had just leapt agilely onto. In a second, she was gone.

Yashamaru opened his eyes. "Huh," Karura muttered, surprised. The girl peered over the rim of the hole, but could see nothing but blackness. "Do you think she's dead?"

Her twin didn't reply immediately, sitting up and adjusting his clothing as he strained his hearing. "Nah," Yashamaru decided. "You can't hear her body smash onto the ground."

Karura shrugged, purple-grey eyes on her twin as he rose. "Okay. Mom wanted us back for dinner by sunset," she pointed out.

The sun was only just turning red on the horizon, but the shadows were already creeping further across the dusty streets. Yashamaru carelessly brushed away Penelope's associations between the lurking shade and a spiky-haired Konoha clan.

"You'll just have to fetch me there, _shinobi_ ," Yashamaru teased his sister, pressing two fingers into her collarbone and sprinting away. Tonight's dinner was supposed to be grilled lizard, and Yashamaru was not going to be late.

* * *

 _People have followed and favorited this piece…oh no. Updates will be relatively infrequent– I've just returned to university for the year– and on no particular schedule. Reviewing and messaging me will guilt me into working faster though, so if you care enough to push me along it will work. I also have no beta, so, if something's wrong you have to either message me or suck it up._

 _Thanks for reading! Good day, and good luck._

 _-Faeriekit_

 _(Disclaimer: I own none of the characters mentioned (save Penelope), locations mentioned, or concepts mentioned. All are either public domain or belong to a preexisting franchise known as Naruto.)_


	3. Anxiety, and an Introduction

Tonight, Yashamaru decided, scrubbing his finger against the sheets of stolen paper, he was going to rewrite a story he already knew. It took a few minutes to gather his thoughts.

"Once," he began, the charcoal squeaking painfully against the paper, "There was a boy named Naruto."

He stared at the blunt words for a moment. It was close, but...it wasn't quite right. He had to scratch it out, but it was a shame that his false start had wasted paper.

"Once," Yashamaru tried again, "There was a girl named Penelope. When she turned twelve, she started to read an epic about a small boy. His name was Naruto."

Better. But what did Yashamaru know about them?

The child took a moment collect her/his/their thoughts, Penelope stringing along pieces of the story while Yashamaru juggled the words required to put it to paper. The boy blackly rubbed his charcoal hand against his cheek.

"This small boy held a great evil in his stomach. It sat still, kind of like an ulcer that could eat him back, but more like radioactive toxins that could seep into the water and eat the town," Yashamaru continued. It didn't make much sense, but she was trying to describe something that fell frustratingly between a self-aware deity and a supremely naturalistic force.

Yashamaru scratched again at his face. "People hated him for being the toxin, even though he was the concrete bunker containing it. The boy named Naruto grew up abandoned and spat on, which was sad and wasteful, because he had a godfather and step-grandfather who could have totally raised him but didn't."

Penelope cupped that thought close to her chest and tried not to spill tears all over it. Here was a baby who needed someone to love him, whose parents had bounties of coworkers and friends who had loved them, but who had no substantial kindness to offer to a penniless, lonesome orphan. Penelope was pushed to tears and left Yashamaru unsettled and startled.

"This boy made a friend of his enemies, spreading love and peace by beating the shit out of them. Or changing their mind, but usually by punching the shit out of them." Yashamaru thought that the punching sounded a lot like Karura when she was trying to make friends with the other kids.

Yashamaru stilled in the darkness of the room he shared with Karura, holding his breath until he could match his breathing with his sleeping sister's. After a minute of shared breaths, Yashamaru put his hunk of charcoal back to the paper.

"And then," Penelope continued, Yashamaru's heart breaking as he scribbles, "He enters a trial by combat and meets a child like him. It's Karura's baby, and he's just as alone but twice as heartbroken as the sunshine boy. Instead of holding nuclear fallout inside his gut, this boy holds something that's both an incarnate of violence and a sham of a foster mother. Karura's too dead to cry," Yashamaru painstakingly scratched out on the paper.

The desert outside the window was unsilent and always moving, sand grains grinding against each other as night creatures skittered across the dunes. Yashamaru stilled his hands. Penelope had no more to remember tonight.

* * *

The twins were five when it became time to join the ninja academy. Their mother bundled them up in coarse outside robes, handed them each a bento for their lunches, and shuffled them out of the house.

Karura spotted the other children before Yashamaru made the connection; children from every house all streamed towards the center of town, presumably making their way to the academy. They followed after in haste.

"Aren't you excited to start school? We're gonna be ninja!" Karura announced gleefully, dragging Yashamaru along by the hand. Yashamaru nodded hesitantly.

To be honest, Penelope hadn't had much experience in fighting. Yashamaru was reluctant to engage in physical violence if he could help it…

…but he knew that he _needed_ to keep Karura safe. She was the most important thing in the whole universe, and he couldn't help her defend herself on missions if he stayed behind as a civilian. That's why he hadn't raised a fuss when Mother had brought the idea up one evening.

They waded through the sea of students, riding the tide through the sandstone doors and into the main hall.

Yashamaru squeezed Karura's hand when an irritable jonin began to announce classes. His sister hopped up on her toes, excited to begin her new life and become something great. Yashamaru listened quietly. He would do his best to protect his sister from her ninja lifestyle.

Life wasn't kind to shinobi…maybe elsewhere, like in Konoha, shinobi came home at night with strong enough conviction to believe that they had done right, or at least, done no harm that day. In Suna, you obeyed every order no matter how it killed you inside.

And if life wasn't kind to Shinobi, Penelope worried in the back of Yashamaru's head, life would be straight up cruel to Kunoichi, the women warriors who practiced their duties in the beds of their targets and received neither respect nor recognition for their missions. Yashamaru, and so Penelope, would be safe from a village cashing in on sharpening children into weapons before puberty.

Karura, Penelope whispered in Yashamaru's ear, spinning shivers down the child's thin spine, would be sold to the village in body parts and blood. Horrified, and unsure why, the child snagged his sister's hand and pulled it close.

His sister scoffed. "Are you already scared of the academy? We haven't even walked into the classroom yet!" Karura mocked him childishly. She wasn't quite aware of how her twin flinched at her voice, but toned the ribbing down nevertheless. "Come on," she urged, pulling Yashamaru along by the hand he had taken hers in, "Assignments are by name, so we're in the same class."

The classroom may have been new to Karura, but it was sharply nostalgic to Penelope. She ran her purple-gray eyes over the walls coated in Suna doctrine and first-aid instructions. It was like looking into a warped mirror of her childhood; instead of bright plastic tables scattered about the room, the desks were splintered wood arranged auditorium style. The colors from wall to floor were muted and unfriendly, dull and uninteresting.

And, of course, Yashamaru observed, scuffing his sandals against the dirt floor, sand was everywhere. In every corner, under all their fingernails, and probably in Karura's hair. He scratched her scalp with his alternate hand to check if he was right. It was a testament to her relationship that she barely even noticed, but sure enough, his hand came away sandier than before.

Damn it. Now Penelope wanted to braid her sister's hair.

"Shut up! Brats to your seats!" someone barked. Yashamaru flinched as a textbook was slammed against the table with superhuman strength. A violet-haired woman glared at the assembled crowd with a bite as sharp as Suna's finest venom, her hands wrapped in ribbons of scar tissue all the way up to her elbows and her face half splashed in acid burns. They looked pinkly fresh.

Startled and shocked, the children quickly fled to an open chair. Yashamaru and Karura ended up sharing a chair when the seats began to run thin, unable to negotiate two chairs when Yashamaru insisted on keeping his sister's hand in her grasp. The woman threw the textbook to the side, seeming to hardly care where it loudly landed. "You may refer to me as Masumi-sensei. From this moment on I will be teaching you stupid brats how to survive the most pathetic of deaths as a shinobi of Sunagakure. Your lessons will include paper tests, physical examinations, and object lessons," the woman listed slowly.

Penelope coaxed Karura's hand into her lap in order to worry at her twin's fingers, careful to avoid actually pissing off her sister. Karura's increased lenience with Penelope's fussing probably meant that her twin was as nervous as she was in the face of this new, hostile situation.

"Any stupid questions?" Masumi-sensei demanded of her rapt audience, who begrudgingly denied her in an off-rhythm chorus. "Good," she muttered. "Tonight, go purchase yourself some live weapons- that means metal kunai and shuriken sharpened for the field, for all the idiot civilian kids. We start to practice with wooden replicas this week, but you brats are going to have to get used to taking care of your weapons a month before you start actually throwing the live ones. Grab a tub of weapons' polish on your way out of the blacksmith. You'll need it."

Oh damn, Penelope thought to herself. This is going to end poorly for a _lot_ of the five-year-olds here. And maybe also Karura, who was impulsive when excited, and Yashamaru was well aware that nothing could make her twin more excited than sharp objects and a clear goal.

"First thing's first," Masumi-sensei declared, eyeing down the clot of new blood Suna had to offer, "You obey every order when given immediately, unless told otherwise. Your superiors are I, the other teachers in the building, any Suna shinobi Chunnin level and above, and the Kazekage. If I tell you to chug poison, you do it. If a Jonin tells you to lick their sandals, you bet your little asses you will lick that sandal clean. If the Kazekage tells you to run yourself on his kunai, you better sprint."

The woman squeezed her eyes low, the tension pulling at her scar tissue where her crows' feet would be. Penelope barely breathed, too cautious to draw any attention to either herself or her more vulnerable sister. She almost let her burning eyeballs weep when Karura began to squeeze the hand that had once kept hers captive.

"Any stupid questions?" their teacher asked after a period of silence, clearly testing to see who would crack under the pressure first, who would be the most vulnerable child out of a whole room of not-even-six-year-olds.

Penelope bit down on Yashamaru's tongue. Hard.

"Good. Don't even consider questioning your captains or other superiors in the field," the teacher snapped. "You would be worse than dead weight. Open the textbook under your desk to page eight. That's the first page with a picture on it for all you damned brats who can't read."

The lessons began. Yashamaru began to wade through the memorization of kanji, too used to Penelope's phonetic alphabet to simply forget the associations. Karura wasn't doing much better, and Penelope worried slightly: Yashamaru was handicapped by her memories, but Karura had no such excuse.

Oh well, Yashamaru decided, nudging his twin when she got another crooked line on a symbol, he would just have to work twice as hard for her sake. It was not as if their mother would be able to afford a tutor for them anyway. Being the first day, the class was dismissed immediately after the language lesson for an extra-long discussion between the teachers about the new classes.

"But before you go!" Masumi-sensei shouted, her scar-veined fist slamming onto the desk so hard that Yashamaru could hear the table snap, "Each of you will take one vial of the diluted solution on your way out. All girls will remain behind for info about the _required_ kunoichi classes that will be taking place after school. All the rest of you, _**dismissed**_!" she yelled hoarsely. It seemed that her need to dig her words into her students was not quite up to par with her actual health yet.

Knowing that he would be kicked out, but scared to leave his twin alone for an instant, Yashamaru clenched onto Karura's hands with all his might. "Stop pinching me!" his sister hissed, taking one hand and sliding his white-knuckle grip off of her at last, but her voice was shaking and Penelope was scared of how her nervous sister might act out in front of their new teacher.

Penelope disagreed with calling that woman a teacher, though. Penelope remembered what to call someone who controlled an entire state and demanded perfect obedience: a dictator. A tyrant. A…uh…

Yashamaru only realized he had left the classroom when he came to realize that he had stubbed his toe, lost in thought while kicking the corner of the building. He bit the inside of his bottom lip to distract himself from the pain momentarily. When would Karura come out? He was worried for her, Penelope's mind filling with all sorts of anxieties and fears that a six-year-old boy didn't know how to combat.

Tired, and anxious, and stressed, Yashamaru leaned his whole body onto the mud-brick building and groaned loudly, allowing gravity to take hold of him and scrape his skin and clothes on the brick. He couldn't exactly leave for the house without his sister. He was bigger than her, kind of, and needed to take care of her. Some day she would have to go into combat without him, but for now Penelope still needed to look after her and make sure she was okay. She was still so little!

The sensation of a sandal being pushed into his ribs was familiar enough. When Yashamaru opened his eyes, Karura was standing over him with eyelashes darkened by moisture. "Why're you lying on the ground?" she asked, her red-rimmed eyes roving over his body. "Did you go sun-crazy again?"

Yashamaru blinked languidly in relief. Penelope resisted telling her about dehydration causing hallucinations, and that Yashamaru's lying in the shade was nothing compared to crying out precious water; there were times for ribbing her sister, but none of them included shaming her for her tears.

"What happened?" Yashamaru asked, pushing himself up with the palms of his hands. Karura's mouth twisted.

"Later," she demanded, her eyes flicking briefly to the school before she turned on her heel and ran for home.

Stunned, and confused, Yashamaru hesitated for the slightest second before sprinting after her. "What?!" he yelled over the sound of the rushing village, dodging vendor and pedestrian alike as he chased after his sister.

"Later!" Karura repeated again at the top of her lungs.

* * *

 **The author doesn't own any character, setting, or concept mentioned in this piece of writing save for Penelope. The only reason I finished this new chapter was because of the reviewer who asked for more: here's looking at you. The fastest way to get me to update is to review, comment, whatever; I thrive on validation. (It also reminds me that this fic is here.)**

 ***edit 11/18/17: I know the line breaks are destroyed. If this doesn't fix it I don't know what will.**


	4. A New, Problematic Idea

"So," Karura declared, leaning against the sandstone wall of the kitchen, "I don't want to go to those stupid kunoichi classes. They don't teach you anything that involves fighting, and I want to be a fighting shinobi. It's all like," Karura tried to explain, waggling her free hand in the open air, "fluffy, like flower arranging. And sitting properly. And pouring tea. That's not useful at all!"

Yashamaru just…blinked. That was what she had wanted to talk about? "I mean…yeah…" Yashamaru agreed doubtfully, "But they're _required_." Yashamaru crossed his arms, letting his weight fall to the side until he too was leaning against the wall. He stared back at her. "You can't just not go. That crazy sensei is going to get you if you skip," Yashamaru pointed out.

The six year old completely agreed with his sister; the classes sounded like no fun at all, sitting and studying uncool things for three extra hours every day. That being said, Penelope was intrigued by the idea of the female-only classes. Yes, arranging flowers wasn't anything that would interest two riotous kids, but there had always been something fascinating to her about the language of flowers, the secrets of poise, the hidden messages in wardrobe and fans and mealtime etiquette… It was proof that there was more to communication than words, and more to art than aesthetics.

Penelope had enough interest in the arts as any former mall makeup artist, and Yashamaru is intrigued enough by the lies one can tell without opening his mouth. Kunoichi arts don't sound _that_ bad; maybe he can convince his sister?

"I mean," Yashamaru brought the idea up tentatively, "It does seem kind of cool, you know? You'll still be learning how to take people out, but, like, quietly. Sneaky," he continued. Penelope was so, _so_ tempted to bring up how ninja-like that would be, but in a world where being a strong ninja meant wielding world-shattering power and wanton destruction, Penelope wasn't sure her sister wouldn't make the connection.

Karura just stared back at him, her gaze not moving from her brother as his words seemed to gain weight and sink in the sweltering Suna air. "W-what," Yashamaru stuttered, his shoulder bouncing against the stone wall as Karura refused to speak again. "What is it?!" Yashamaru asked, his nerves intensified by her silence.

The girl's gaze finally broke. "Oh," Karura spoke quietly, and then, "Yashamaru…do you think kunoichi classes are cool?"

Yashamaru flinched. "Well, uh, maybe…?" the six year old squeaked, because as much as the thought of such subterfuge titillated Penelope, there was no way a young boy wanted to admit to liking _girly_ things to his sister. Karura hummed in thought, her purple eyes piercing into Yashamaru's divided soul.

"Karura, can you help me in the kitchen?" the twins' mother called from the stone oven, reaching in with heavily clothed hands to pull out the cast iron pot. Yashamaru took the distraction by the horns and sprinted away from his sister. "I'll come, Mother."

Yashamaru had the chance to ignore Karura's weird reactions as he followed his mothers' basic instructions, separating the meat from the skeleton and setting loose bones aside for broth. Penelope liked the rhythmic, familiar task, and soon found herself slipping into something more like peace as he pried the meat apart with his fingers. "We're having rice too, Yasha. Don't forget to put them back into the pot after its empty," his Mother reminded him briskly, spooning out the cooked roots from the bottom of the pot. "We can't have soup tomorrow unless we make the stock tonight."

Penelope had only just been learning to cook before she had been forcefully blasted out of her world and could barely boil ramen. The warmth of standing in front of the oven, his mother's affections, and the satisfaction of creating sustenance for his family was still brand new to Yashamaru. It was pleasant change.

But no matter how fast Yashamaru worked though, stretching his childish dexterity for the sake of the kitchen, it didn't really change Karura's weird mood. By the time they had set food down on their little slab of a table, seated on threadworn cushions and the dignity of their forefathers, his sister's stare had neither faltered nor fallen. It killed Yashamaru's mood quite a bit, if Penelope was to be honest with herself.

"Karura," their mother sighed, her sun tanned lines deepening with empathetic distress, "Please don't stress out your brother." If Karura hadn't been so pensive, she would have mocked Yashamaru for his fragility. What was so important in her thoughts right now that she couldn't even make fun of her brother? "Just focus on your rice please," Mother added again, taking her own food to her mouth as if to declare the matter beneath discussion.

Yashamaru scarfed down his food and ran to the bedroom, too nervous to sit and too nervous to leave an empty plate. He ignored his mother's calls for him to come back and help, knowing full well that Karura would be roped into washing up as he had helped cook dinner.

He took the leftover time to sit atop his mattress, toeing his textbook open with a foot as he contorted his fingers in the nonsense shinobi called "handsigns". Penelope hated the how inflexible and slow she felt without the practice of flinging herself through the signs and bending her joints accordingly. The sooner she got Yashamaru's fingers accustomed to the pain of this dexterous warfare, the faster Penelope could skip through the lessons in class.

It might have just been her over-expectations of herself– Penelope had never gotten anything lower than a B in her early years of school, and she absolutely intended to have Yashamaru live up to her standards– but Yashamaru had the determination to back up her goals with the boundless energy and enthusiasm that came with being younger than a pubescent mess.

Even after the lengthy time it took Karura to do _any_ chore (cleaning and clearing was never her favorite activity), Yashamaru noticed with pinpoint precision as she pulled the curtain to their bedroom open with a hand, her lavender eyes lidded low with deep certainty.

Whatever it was, it was serious.

"I can't go to kunoichi classes," Karura reaffirmed, her voice low as to not let their mother hear her borderline traitorous words. The academy was more than an educational standard; it served as the children of Suna's first military superiors and hierarchy. Defiance of the teachers' words meant defiance of Suna itself, and everything the military dictatorship stood for.

"I won't get in trouble though," Karura interrupted Yashamaru's not yet spoken rebuttal, her stubby pointer finger warding away Penelope's concerns, "If you go as me. If you're Karura instead."

Yashamaru's head blanked with instinctual fear of defying authority as Penelope began to shriek endlessly. "No," he managed to spill out, Penelope's hurried arguments and rushed rebuttals streaming through his hands like incense smoke on their father's altar. "No. No! Karura, that's crazy! I wouldn't, I could never–"

* * *

"It looks like you got stuck here despite all that whining you did yesterday," Akemi-Sensei, teacher of the kunoichi classes, lightly pointed out, more than willing to drive the emotional wedge into the bratty girl that had been such an annoyance on the first day of classes. "Are you prepared to cooperate now, Karura?" the teacher asked genially, smiling down at the newest problem student she would get to beat into submission.

"I guess so," Yashamaru muttered despondently under his breath, the perfect image of his downtrodden and browbeaten twin. Penelope couldn't help but wonder how long she could get through the ranks before someone figured out she had a penis.

What could she say? Karura took ultimate priority in this world, and Yashamaru would just have to act accordingly.

* * *

 **The author doesn't own any character, setting, or concept mentioned in this piece of writing save for Penelope and her backstory. I finally managed to get to this lovely plot point… Phew. The rest of the story may or may not be based on this turning point in Yashamaru/Penelope's life. I'm sorry it took a year to get to this... I have no clue what I'm doing.**

 **The fastest way to get me to update is to review, comment, whatever; I thrive on validation. (It also reminds me that this fic is here.)**

 **-Thank you for reading at all!**


	5. Well, Someone Had to Get a New Hobby

Okay, so Yashamaru _loved_ kunoichi classes.

To be fair, he liked them more than basic shinobi academy lessons; those all involved boring textbook work, math problems, and language lessons- which Penelope still just could _not_ get a hold of quite yet. She wept for a phonetic alphabet that, although it never functioned correctly, had at least consistent letter to sound cues.

But _this_ …

Penelope's struggles with the language aside, the kunoichi classes were based more in practicality than in theory for a change. The regular shinobi curriculum was just too dangerous for six and seven year olds to start actively practicing. There was no need to lose half the class to an explosion tag, or to individual slips of chakra or weaponry. That being said, with the little girls of Suna learning subterfuge, infiltration, and manipulation tactics, there was little chance of accidental death.

So Yashamaru spent his time with silk flowers (reusable, and fresh blossoms were too expensive to export), traditional dresses, the basics of the tea ceremony, and how to properly host a dinner party. Or ruin a dinner party beyond repair. Or poison a dinner party. Or destroy a reputation at a dinner party. Or further your agenda at a dinner party. There was nothing quite as fun, Yashamaru mused over today's assigned arrangemnt, as sabotage. It suited Penelope's tastes more than wanton destruction anyway; that was more Karura's priority.

"You're really good, Karura!" the girl stationed next to Yashamaru, Uta, enthused. As a clanless and mediocre student, she had been trying her best to form alliances with promising fellows since the first class. "I wouldn't have thought of that combination immediately," she continued, sending an obvious glance down at her own arrangement of anemone and dodder. As far as flower combinations went, "illness" and "parasitic" went pretty well, but Yashamaru had no need to encourage her interest in him.

"I do my best," Yashamaru replied blithely, somewhat of a vapid smile on his face as he nestled his center of kuroyuri with erika and higanbana. His arrangement was more intricate than hers, a flower meaning either "love" or "curse" as the base and a fringe of "solitude" and "abandonment". He had never known there were so many ways to piss someone off with a bouquet; he would have made one for Karura's birthday, but flowers were so much harder to find in Suna than Penelope was used to. As for now, Penelope did her best to ignore this preteen's blatant attempt to get on her good side. Playing dumb would work until she at least left the academy.

Yashamaru picked up a sakurasō replica from the table and considered it studiously, wondering if there was a way he could toss in a handful of "desperation" into his "You Are Sad and Alone" bouquet. It would be scathing, yes, but Penelope thought that the teacher might call her out if the colors didn't mesh well together. If she left the erika out, the purple of the blossoms wouldn't clash with the yellow, and then she could add sayuri for an extra kick in the teeth… Or would the instructor see it as pedantic? It was a vicious, hateful flower, but the model was well worn, and was probably used by hundreds of students before her.

Yashamaru didn't care enough about this; he just wanted to pass this class as fast as possible without being outed, dammit. Why was he panicking over _flowers_?

By the time the girls were called to bring their flower arrangements to the front, Yashamaru had not changed a single leaf or bud. There was no such thing as receiving full points in Suna's education system, but raising a teacher's interest in your abilities was more than enough satisfaction when it came to Yashamaru's– uh, "Karura's" work. Akemi-sensei's raised eyebrow was _worth it_.

* * *

"…So yeah, things are going pretty well," Yashamaru ended offhandedly, scraping his name into the top of the sandstone wall they had claimed for now. It was unpleasantly beige, like everything else in this village, and crumbled beneath his touch. He wondered how it survived sandstorms at all…or maybe it would be replaced soon?

No wonder Suna was so poor, with the constant reconstruction and all. Just from looking out on the village from the only places an academy student could reach without chakra, Yashamaru could see construction on some older buildings, that, to Penelope's standards would be considered brand new. But the elements were harsher in the desert, and time took a harder toll on Sunagakure's infrastructure than arguably any other village in the elemental nations.

"You always were a sissy teacher's pet," Karura spoke thoughtfully. She ignored her twin's whine of protest and subsequent pout. "I'm glad you're having fun, but are you sure we had to switch during regular lessons too?" the girl prodded. Yashamaru edged himself into the shade of a building as she spoke. "Akemi-Sensei and Masumi-Sensei have separate classes. We have definitely gotten away with changing clothes in the bathroom without them noticing," Karura complained.

Yashamaru bet her complaints had more to do with him rejecting her first idea than her actually wanting to change clothes in the gross academy stalls. "And you _really_ wanted to risk being kicked out of the academy and blacklisted from village jobs if one of them just talked to the other techer? Just once? If they _ever_ decided to just sit in on one of the other classes?" Yashamaru pointed out, putting Penelope's earlier thoughts into words that might convince his bull-headed twin. The girl's expression said everything.

"Nah. I'm just gonna be a girl now. Forever," Yashamaru deadpanned. Hey, if needs must...

His sister whacked him on the arm. "You already were a girl, you bellycrawler," Karura declared cheerfully, not at all put off by his playful sternness or his flinch of pain.

Penelope didn't really know if Karura's statement was right or wrong. "And you're a violent little brat," Yashamaru parroted Masumi-sensei's commendation of Karura's recent behavior. Being able to act like a "boy" just meant his twin had the opportunity to punch harder.

Karura's twin dodged as she telegraphed punch to his face, only to force him to wriggle immediately out of the way as she switched halfway through the strike to aim for his midsection. Yashamaru let himself lose balance off the wall, struck with a sense of familiarity as he watched Karura's face fall away as gravity overtook his small form. Now unlike last time, however, the boy had gone through falling training in taijutsu class.

The fall wasn't so far that Yashamaru couldn't confidently smack his arm against the ground and break his momentum. It was barely a second of missed time before he stood, turned a victorious smirk towards the sister sitting peevishly upon the wall–

–and a klaxon rang from building to building as an emergency state fell over the village.

* * *

 **I don't know anything about flower arranging or Hanakotoba; I used the Wikipedia article and ThursdayPlaid's "How do you say fuck you and everything you stand for in flowers?" ask post off of tumblr and am guessssiiiiinnnng!**

 **The author doesn't own any character, setting, or concept mentioned in this piece of writing save for Penelope and her backstory. The fastest way to get me to update is to review, comment, whatever; I thrive on validation. (It also reminds me that this fic is here.) Hey, this chapter was written with one review; imagine how much faster this would update with the click of that button and a few words!**

 **Thank you for supporting this fic!**

 **-Faeriekit**


	6. Sounding the Alarm

**Yeah yeah, I haven't updated in a while. Long story short, life sucks and employment is worse.**

 **Anyway, back to the cliffhanger:**

* * *

The alarms of Sunagakure were varied; there were silent ones, ones that the civilians couldn't see, that consisted purely of thrums of chakra passed from shinobi to shinobi. They were used only in the event that the general, chakra-incapable population should not know of a situation. There were loud ones, with bells ringing from every building, that called all citizens to take shelter belowground. A shinobi could eventually seal and close the network of caverns in order to protect the villagers from a concentrated attack on the village.

The klaxon that wrung itself out over the village was one long, groaning tone that wound its way through the village and into the ear like a ghost's rattle. Penelope had no idea why it was so sour, so harsh, but Yashamaru had heard it before. Karura knew the awful sound just as well as he did- the alarm had been introduced to to their academy class as part of the Academy curriculum.

There was a sandstorm on the way.

Karura let herself slip and fall off the wall, bouncing with a wince when she landed harshly on her heels. The girl tended to be faster than Yashamaru, so her grip around his wrist was more help than hindrance as Karura pulled them into a sprint across the village.

The run was excruciating under the burning sun and set to the soundtrack of a screaming siren. It made something thrum in Yashamaru's chest. Something inside of him was hot and bright and as sour as the siren as they dove through familiar alleyways and streets with new fear, and it was pulling at his lungs and stole his air as the brick-built buildings flew past them.

Then, with new clarity, Yashamaru glanced up- the sky was steadily darkening, the difference clear even with a child's eye. He knew that they couldn't keep running.

"Karura, we need to go inside," Yashamaru said, realizing abruptly that the wind and the alarm had picked up fast enough that his sister could no longer hear him. "We need to get in a building! It's too fast!"

Karura didn't even turn to him, still running, still pulling him by the wrist. "We have to get home! Mother's alone, and she's going to need us!" Karura insisted over the din.

Yashamaru watched the sand sway around their ankles, reminiscent of some phenomena neither twin had yet seen. Penelope knew they wouldn't make it the rest of the run to their house. The sand was already kicking up- they needed to get inside a building _now_.

When they passed by a blessedly open door, the shopkeeper only just finished shoving their wares on their display back into the shop, Yashamaru tugged _hard_ on Karura's hand. The twins tumbled into the shop and collapsed, limbless, on the floor.

Karura rose first, like Penelope knew she would, anger in her eyes, and something sharp on her child's tongue-

-But the heavy slam of the door cut the girl off. The two realized at that moment that they weren't alone in the shop- several more children, a few elderly persons, and another shopkeeper were all seated uncomfortably on the floor, murmuring quietly to each other. The wind that had seemed such a relief from the sun only an hour ago began to bat against the roof like an angry toddler, slamming anything it could reach with its full force.

Penelope could see Karura's throat swallow nothing. "Mother's alone out there," Karura repeated, but her eyes were wet and unsteady as they anchored themselves to the pounded, wailing ceiling. Yashamaru pushed his body between Karura's arm and her chest and wrapped his own arms around her midsection. He put his head in her neck. Penelope brought as many old tunes forth as she could remember, and Yashamaru's thin voice filled the small space.

"You might as well lie down," the shopkeeper muttered, one eye on the entangled pair, "This is not going to take too long, but you're in for the wait."

The shopkeeper was right; the entirety of the storm didn't take long at all. Yashamaru's singing petered out by the time the winds seemed to diminish, but he was still humming until the very last moment the siren finally died off. But as easily as Penelope could rationalize two hours, Yashamaru's own fear spread the time out to seem almost eons before the winds finally died.

The door was unlatched, the citizens of Suna wandered back into their business, and Karura and Yashamaru were off like a shot. The buildings were worn down, and the edges of the infrastructure's wounds filed down to nubs. The rubble was strewn about as if wasteland had vomited up over their city. The walk through the destroyed streets was no harder than the academy training courses, though, so the debris hardly slowed them down as they made it to their house.

The house was somehow barely touched. The roof and walls were thin, and would require some fortifying later on, but their home was still standing, everything still inside, and only a few fancy plates had broken in the sandstorm.

"Mother's going to be sad the dinnerware broke," Karura sighed, picking up a fragmented rose petal from the shards of printed china, but Yashamaru was silent.

 _I'm going out to buy groceries. I'll be back before dinner. Karura, watch over your brother while I'm gone. Yashamaru, don't be afraid to start on the chores for tonight._

 _-Mother_

It was in her handwriting, stuck with a tack to the wall by the door. If Penelope hadn't been looking for it, Yashamaru would have never spotted the note. Too afraid of what it might mean, Yashamaru tried, for once, to ignore Penelope's worried whispers of accidents and casualties during calamities.

He left the note where it was. Yashamaru preferred instead to tap Karura on the shoulder and point to it, letting his sister read it on her own time. Karura scanned the note, squinted, and frowned.

"So she should be back soon," his sister repeated their mother's words, but there was some lack of conviction in her words. The tone was telling.

Their mother didn't come home that night.

Karura and Yashamaru slept in her bed.

* * *

 **The author doesn't own any character, setting, or concept mentioned in this piece of writing save for Penelope and her backstory. The fastest way to get me to update is to review, comment, whatever; I thrive on validation. (It also reminds me that this fic is here.)**

 **Welcome to the dead people party! Only more people will die from here-on out, so if you like sadness, uh, welcome in. Death toll so far: two parents. The twins are now Batman.**

 **Thanks for reading!**

 **-Faeriekit**


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